Integrated circuits that are constructed using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology may offer advantages over previous circuit technology, such as lower cost and higher speed. For this reason, CMOS is a technology of choice for constructing integrated circuits in many applications.
In a communication system a transmitter may be constructed using CMOS circuitry. Such circuitry may be used in the data path of the transmitter to prepare a data signal to be transmitted through a channel.
However, when the data path includes CMOS circuitry, such circuitry may introduce jitter into the data signal.
For a signal of a given baud rate, jitter may be considered a measure of the deviations of the signal edges, at a defined threshold, with respect to an ideal (perfect) signal at the same baud rate. It may be measured as a peak-to-peak value or a root mean square (rms) value. Jitter is often broken down into narrower definitions, which may include random jitter, sinusoidal jitter, data dependent jitter and more.